a despatch from another world
Vladimir Nabokov discusses Lolita with, I think, Lionel Trilling on a fifties TV show. It’s funny: Lolita seems so contemporary but the clip reminds us how much literary culture — indeed, culture as a whole — has changed. Could you imagine a television today devoting so much time to tweedy, pipe-puffing bookmen?
I loved this! The suits, the black and white footage, the serious discussion of man-girl love.
Watched this the other day and had exactly the same thought.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHOAh-EiogE
Minus the pipes there's one on the ABC hosted by Jennifer Byrne I think.
Not really the same, though, is it? I mean, books do get on TV today, it's true, but the focus is much more on personalities. You wouldn't get a trio of dry-as-dust old buffers just talking like that.
Posh accents for an American show! – though of course watching American movies from around the same time seems to confirm that a variant of the British posh accent was common for American actors.
That may in fact be something that, consciously or unconsciously, they and Jennifer Byrne hold in common – the rarefied air, the self-satisfaction in being so obviously cultured, and, oh my, yes, the *elitism*!
tweedy pipe-puffing is still in vogue here in france. they devote a surprising, delightful amount of time to literature on some channels. there's even a late-night show featuring unkown actors quite simply sitting on a couch reading from great classics. wierd.